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“It’s not as if Mr. Downing cares about May, regardless of what people think. Alice, who works for him, is a friend of mine. She says that May runs off any good workers so she can get her friends hired. That man, Billy Turner, is one of them. She was having an affair with Billy until Mr. Downing advertised for someone to help nurse his wife.” She made a face. “Word is that Billy was furious at being jilted. But I guess he forgave her if he’s working where she does.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is May really a nurse?”
“She’s a practical nurse,” she replied. “It’s a fairly highly skilled position, and there are some very good practical nurses. May isn’t one. I had a friend check her grades. She almost failed every subject.”
“You’re a gold mine of information,” he said with admiration, smiling down at her.
“I like people, mostly,” she said. “But I don’t like people who take advantage of sick folks.”
“That makes two of us.”
He tilted her face up to his and searched her eyes for so long that her heartbeat went crazy. Her lips parted as she tried to breathe normally. He saw that. It lifted his chin and made him feel vaguely arrogant. She was special. In a life filled with women who were mostly as hard as the men, she was like the violet he’d called her, growing wild deep in the forest. He felt at peace with her. His turbulent life had given him little of that pleasure.
“You really shouldn’t encourage me,” she said in a husky little voice.
“Encourage you to do what?” he asked.
“Go nuts over you,” she said. She bit her lower lip. “You said it yourself. We’re ships passing in the night. You’ll walk away and never look back.” She grimaced. “I’ll sit here with an empty house, and maybe later on, a cat or two, mourning you.”
“You’ll be over me and after some other man in three weeks.” He laughed with cynicism.
“Do you really think so?” she asked softly, searching his eyes.
“I have to think so,” he said, forcing coldness into his tone. “I mean it. I have no desire whatsoever to spend the rest of my life with a woman, married or not.”
She studied him. “Because if you get close to somebody, really close, you couldn’t bear to lose them. Have you lost somebody along the way, besides the woman you wanted to marry?”
He averted his eyes.
Her small hand flattened over his shirt, under the suit jacket. “I never gossip,” she said.
“Bull,” he shot right back, and his eyes were accusing. “You’ve been telling me all about the people in the Downing household.”
“Yes, because that’s your business and you needed to know. I don’t gossip about people’s private lives, though. Not ever.”
His broad, muscular chest rose and fell. His thumb went to her lower lip and rubbed softly against it. “It isn’t so much what I lost, as what I never had.” He drew in a breath. “My parents never touched each other, much less my late sister and me. I grew up in a household without human contact, without love. We were dependents on the tax returns when we were small. Later, we were free labor.”
“It would have been that way for me, except for my mother,” she said quietly. She shook her head. “People shouldn’t have kids unless both parents want them. It’s unfair to everybody.”
The mention of children made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t know why. Children had never been part of his life. His colleagues had kids, of course, and they brought them to the few social events sponsored by his office. But he avoided them mostly.
“I’m not good with kids,” he said. “I haven’t been around many, except casually.”
Her face grew soft with emotion. “I adore them,” she said. “I spent six of the happiest months of my life working on the children’s medical ward at my hospital. I like working emergency,” she added, “but if I had a choice, it wouldn’t be the emergency room.”
“Can’t you choose?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No openings on the children’s ward. People who work there stay forever.” She laughed. “I guess I would, too. It’s the next best thing to having a baby of my own.”
“No woman I ever dated wanted one,” he pointed out.
“Let me guess,” she said amusedly. “They wanted dining and dancing and hot sex.”
“Please!” he muttered.
“I’m a nurse. We’ve seen everything.”
“I’m in law enforcement. So have I,” he shot back.
